Day Off in Hartford

Woke up around 7:45. The bus was parked next to the hotel in downtown Hartford. Went in to check on our rooms at 9. The not-as-nice-as-she-should-be-to-guests person at the desk told me that nothing was ready and that it would be at least 2 hours before any rooms would start becoming available. No big deal, I'll play along for now. Only because I've got a couple of newspapers to read on the bus and no one's gonna be awake for a while.

Went back in at 11, to find that exactly one room was now ready. I've seen this movie too many times, so I asked if they were sticking to their rooming list assignments or giving us first available cleans. And of course they were sticking to the assigned room numbers. In other words, I had room 401 on the list, and even though they may have had 20 comparable rooms clean and ready, they were gonna by God make me wait until room 401's guest had vacated and the room was cleaned.

Fuck that.

I told them in the nicest way possible that the bus driver had to shut off the generator because a cop was about to give him a noise ticket for $376 (which is true), and that once the gennie was shut off that I'd have to get everyone off the bus. This would fill their lobby with a bunch of ugly, smelly roadies.

Man, you shoulda seen their faces when I told 'em that.

Within 60 seconds, the manager on duty appeared and started putting all of my people into clean rooms. Ten minutes later I was on the bus waking everyone up.

Did a bunch of nothing for most of the day. Went next door to McDonald's with one of the guys for lunch at 2. Ran into another couple of our people there, so we all had lunch together.

Sooner, our LD, called mid-afternoon to ask if I wanted to eat sushi for dinner. She's a total sweetie, so of course I said yes. Two other folks went, also. The restaurant was flat out awesome. Some of the best sushi I've ever had. Very creative chefs.

After dinner, we met Patrick at the British pub across the street for a few beers. I actually had the good sense to pack it in and go home at 11. If I'd have stayed any longer, it could have gotten ugly for me in the morning.